Discovery of Lake Vostok (2012)

British scientists have reached beneath Antarctic ice and grown bacteria using samples pulled from a former subglacial lake.

The research, published in the journal Diversity, strengthens a growing body of evidence that life can exist in the most extreme environments -- with freezing cold, crushing pressure and utter darkness -- the kind of unfriendly conditions that could exist on other planets.

The 12.5-foot sample was pulled from the bottom of Lake Hodgson, a 306.4-foot-deep body of water that sat under more than 1,500 feet of ice at the end of the last ice age, around 10,500 years ago. Some of the sediments may be nearly 100,000 years old.

Related "Discovery of Lake Vostok (2012)" Articles

British scientists have reached beneath Antarctic ice and grown bacteria using samples pulled from a former subglacial lake.
The research, published in the journal Diversity, strengthens a growing body of evidence that life can exist in the most...

Antarctica’s Lake Vostok doesn’t seem like the most hospitable home on the planet for any kind of life. Trapped under a glacier 2.3 miles thick, it’s subject to extreme pressures, extreme cold, extreme heat (possibly from hydrothermal vents) and lack of...